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When the theoretical foundations for modern capitalism were being developed most honest analyses fully expected and warned of how some of the most privileged members of society if left unchecked were likely to become fanatical in their accumulation of wealth and concentration of power. To which, inevitably, anyone without redress for the oppressions and exploitations levelled against them would respond with force. This is why one of the key roles of government in a capitalist society, if it has any chance of avoiding class war, has to be the regulation of the worst excesses of the capitalist class in their relentless pursuit of wealth and power. While at the same time making sure that the “right sort of people” have their hands on the levers of power.
When I look at the modern world and the relationships between the processes of government in a capitalist superstructure and the direct impacts these both have on people and the planet I often struggle with what are quite convoluted dynamics. I find it easier to think of them in practice as levers for the allocation of managerial control, one increases or decreases the concentration of financial control, while another does the same for political control. If either is pushed too far towards the absolute concentration end of the spectrum the powerless majority almost inevitably takes up arms against their overlords. Equally if the levers are pushed too far towards the absolute dilution end of the spectrum then the elite are erased from existence, often with violence.
One of the difficulties that we as a species have struggled with for several millennia now is that we seem to be consistently skewing towards models of society where the people with their hands on the levers of power tend to have inherited their positions rather than earned them based on merit. Unsurprisingly, the decisions these people make are disproportionately made in consideration of their own and their peer groups interests, which is invariably at odds with all those who didn’t inherit control over the levers.
These conflicting considerations within an economically divided population has been at the forefront of all discussions around democracy since it was first theorised. While the argument goes that if the poor outnumber the rich and political power is apportioned evenly, the poor will inevitably address their own poverty by utilising their political strength collectively; the same can also be said of when there is no democratic channel to funnel collective demands through. In oppressive dictatorships and monarchies the masses will inevitably rise up against their overlords.
In order to avoid these outcomes, universal suffrage was introduced slowly and with a close eye on whose hands were on the political lever at any given time. The solution that was pursued was that the poor should feel like they are involved, but they really shouldn’t have too much power. Of course for this to work there also needed to be a firm and sympathetic hand on the cultural and academic levers of power as well. The last thing the rich needed was an educated working class with a forum for expressing their shared grievances. This is after all a very fragile system.
The checks and balances that political analysts talk about as defences against authoritarianism have also proved useful in defending against the very sort of economic equalisation that a democratically represented working class would likely demand. The Royal Prerogative and the House of Lords in the UK, and the Electoral College and the Supreme Court of the United States are all examples of systems that allow the ruling class to overrule the will of the electorate if needed.
In the modern era these systems are rarely utilised to determine an election, but they can be and once in a while are. In the Florida recount in 2000 it was the Supreme Court that stopped the count and ordered no more recounts. Not the people, the electorate, nor even the electoral college but 5 Justices on the Supreme Court effectively appointed the President.
I’m not suggesting for a moment that Al Gore was a revolutionary threat to the wealth of the global power elite, but imagine it had been Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who had their political aspirations cut short. However it would be unlikely to get to that. The political leaderships of the two-party system have all the mechanisms they need to achieve that objective long before the national electorate are ever involved. Lest we forget how in 2017 the courts found that the DNC were perfectly within their rights to rig the 2016 presidential primaries against Bernie Sanders in favour of Hilary Clinton.
The problem for the power elite in the modern political landscape is that these sorts of counter-democratic mechanisms need to be used as a very last resort because doing so highlights the illusion of modern “democracy”. Hence the need for a tight grip on the cultural and academic levers as well. As long as the mainstream and internet media are under the control of billionaires and corporations, government allows misinformation and disinformation to be publicised without restriction, leading politicians, journalists and academics are beholden to the economic elite and of course the electorate is distracted and not politically engaged, one rarely needs to trigger these nuclear options.
Watching the culmination of a process that started centuries ago isn’t any easier for knowing how we got here. And if you only take as your starting point the last time sections of the power elite so brazenly tried to concentrate power so absolutely, this has still been a century long process. Not, as many of the political commentators would have us believe, an entirely unpredictable turn of events which ambushed all parties. In their defence, this “who could have seen it coming” position has been repeated and amplified ad nauseam by the algorithmic shift in the structure of the internet towards novel and pithy platitudes as opposed to evidenced and peer reviewed analysis.
At the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century, after hundreds of years of the working classes pushing back against their overlords, the European power elite were physically forced into a series of concessions which took the form of a slow drift towards universal suffrage at home and the surrender of colonised lands around the globe. A process which culminated in WW1 and WW2, and the redrawing of the imperialist landscape with the “allied” superpowers, USSR, USA and China taking over control of the global levers of power and beginning their own long and bloody marches towards Empire.
In response to the changing political and cultural landscape in the post-war era, which now included “communist” and capitalist elites vying for the appearance of a mandate from their “constituents”, the so-called democracies were forced into a concessionary trajectory in order to avoid their populations demanding a continuing shift towards more democratised power and economic equality.
The “west” through supposedly liberal theorists like Keynes and Galbraith called for the political elite to exert power over the worst excesses of the unfettered capitalists who had been shifting towards the hard right, and to begin making concessions to the previously exploited masses. These took the form of things such as the National Health Service and the G.I. Bill. Fulfilling the long-standing prediction that with greater actual democracy economic equality inevitably follows.
However this was quickly responded to by “conservative” theorists such as Friedman and Hayek calling for the economic elite to wrestle control away from the liberal intelligentsia who were moving towards “communism”, and instead called for the lifting of any and all regulations and restrictions on the most reactionary and fanatical of their cohort. This is best exemplified by the Chicago Boys interference in Chile and the Trilateral Commission’s 1975 study called “The Crisis of Democracy”.
Much as we like to think that technology has some how moved us forward. The unfortunate truth is that this neo-liberal agenda has not been consigned to history. In fact quite the reverse. The age of computer technology in the home starts while Thatcher and Reagan carried the baton and waged war on the bottom 99%, followed by Bush Snr. and Major in the 90s, Bush Jr. and Blair in the 00s and on and on to where we currently find ourselves, an openly oligarchic USA aiding an equally oligarchic Russia to hand political power over to a very small group of billionaires and their very small-minded boot-boys.
The reason that the self-regulating lever system has failed so miserably is because in order to maintain the appearance of collective freedom the system required a collegiate culture to exist within the ruling elite. As long as everyone stayed within their own spheres from one generation to the next, albeit with a small amount of crossover, and stayed focussed on upholding the system that they collectively benefited from, they were able to perpetuate an illusion of meritocratic democracy without having to go so far as to embrace authoritarian systems such as oligarchy and fascism in order to maintain their privilege.
The cultural, academic, political and economic elite were all singing the same song, “the best rise to the top and so we should all just let them lead”. This illusion is at the core of most, if not all modern national identities, and up until relatively recently fundamental to the justification for the globalised capitalist identity. As long as everyone at the top tows the line this system can sustain itself across decades and centuries, and has done so. But that doesn’t stop it from being fundamentally and demonstrably a lie.
The lie starts to unravel when one sub-group within the power elite feels that they can subordinate the others. This is when the curtain starts to pull back revealing the anti-democratic and anti-meritocratic reality of government in a capitalist society. This is what is currently happening as sections of the global power elite push towards global oligarchy. And I would argue largely predictably in as much as the culture that modern capitalism has chosen to promote in order to quell unrest is based on promoting a correlation between wealth and intelligence. It isn’t really that surprising that the wealthy have drunk their own kool-aid.
And while this feels overwhelming it is also worth remembering that over the course of the last few centuries the working classes around the world have been forcing the levers towards the complete dilution end of the gauge without missing a beat by working together. Every freedom that is enjoyed on the planet today has been won incrementally in conflict and confrontation against the worst of the power elite. It was only ever through the working class coming together in collective defence of one another that the power elite were forced to fight to keep their hands on the levers of power.
While many of us understand government in a capitalist society as a collectively agreed upon system for regulating the worst excesses of individuals within our communities and for sharing the responsibility for ensuring that everyone has equal access to justice, health, education, and safety, the reality simply does not bear that out. If that is the world we want to live in then it has to be created by the collective will and action of the people. We can’t rely on leaders to do it for us, we each must stand up for what we believe in and for those who can’t stand up for themselves.
History tells us that if government doesn’t represent the will of all of the people it will eventually be forcibly replaced by something that does.